New smart TV owners are experimenting more with accessing video via the Internet.This year, 56% of smart TV set owners have accessed some video via a Net connection, according to media research firm Parks Associates. The number is up from 40% two years ago. Overall, Internet-connected video watching on big TV screens is up 30% in the last six months.When it comes to premium video, viewing is evenly split between movies (30%) and TV (32%).Parks Associates believes more activity will come because nearly one-half of HDTVs shipped in 2012 will be Internet-connectable. Pietro Macchiarella, research analyst at Parks Associates, stated: "This device, when connected, offers a toehold to a variety of players, including broadcasters, over-the-top video providers and pay-TV providers."Parks says 71% watch online TV shows at least once a month. This figure is up from 51% a year ago. In addition, 75% of U.S. smart TV owners watch on-demand online movies at least monthly, versus 57% in 2011.Previous research reports from other companies showed that smart TV owners were slow when it came to viewing video from Internet-connected platforms.
While Google and YouTube continue to rule video advertising, a group of properties have come to underpin the broader marketplace. Indeed, each of the top five video ad properties, including BrightRoll, Hulu, Adap.tv, and TubeMogul, as well as YouTube, delivered more than 1 billion video ads last month, according to the new data from comScore. Following Google’s prized property -- which ranked first with 1.41 billion ads -- the BrightRoll Video Network accounted for nearly 1.39 billion ads; Hulu was responsible for 1.33 billion ads; Adap.tv chalked up 1.15 billion ads; while the TubeMogul Video Ad Platform recorded 1.04 billion ads. Continuing to break records, more than 180 million U.S. Web users viewed 33 billion pieces of video content -- and 11 billion ads -- in June, according to comScore. Driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, Google sites ranked as the top online video content property in June with 154 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo Sites with 51 million, Facebook.com with 49 million, VEVO with 46 million and Viacom Digital with 39 million. Last month, time spent watching video ads totaled 4.6 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 805 million minutes. Overall, video ads reached 53% of the total U.S. population an average of 68 times during the month. Hulu, for its part, delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 52, while ESPN delivered an average of 34 ads per viewer. Looking specifically at YouTube’s partners, video music channel Vevo attracted 45.1 million viewers, while Warner Music drew 26.1 million viewers. Trailing both, gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.6 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 21.2 million and FullScreen with 16.2 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement -- 76 minutes per viewer -- followed by Vevo -- 50 minutes per viewer. Among all YouTube partners, Vevo streamed the most videos -- 567 million -- followed by Machinima -- 447 million.
Drilling into media paths to determine what drives consumers to purchase is key to improving efficiencies in cross-channel marketing and advertising. For both retail and travel industries, multichannel conversion paths that lead with display advertising tend to convert consumers to buyers the most rapidly -- but determining the correct type of display ad can become a challenge, according to a study released Tuesday. It's also unclear to marketers where in the path to put video, retargeting, mobile and search. The IgnitionOne Travel and Retail 2012 study explains ways to reduce conversion times simply by rearranging media in the purchase funnel. Media such as retargeting can increase higher average order values (AOVs) in purchases, but could take longer for consumers to go from ad to purchase. Display works best for retail when the media appears early in the conversion path. Display ads drive a 29% higher AOV than other single-channel paths. Combined with search channels -- both paid and organic -- it drives a 16% higher AOV when at the top of the path, and converts consumers 43% faster than other multichannel paths. The order in which the media leads the consumer to make a purchase matters too. Attribution models require marketers to understand how media channels interact and assist with conversions. For example, how do display ads and paid-search ads drive higher AOV orders when display sits at the end of the conversion path? This same scenario can convert consumers more quickly when paid search sits at the beginning of the funnel path. Display advertising can support travel marketers too, but the media becomes a more successful tool as part of a multichannel path. The report explains that clicks from display advertising achieve 20% higher AOV and 38% more purchases when it is the last exposure of a multichannel path, compared with being the only channel in the conversion funnel. "It works very well following paid search, resulting in a 28% higher AOV, compared to display-only paths," according to the report. "These users are also 72% more likely to purchase again, compared to display-only paths, and 52% more likely to purchase again, compared to paid-search-only paths."
On Monday, the campaign for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney posted an ad on YouTube that featured Barack Obama singing Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." The clip, "Political Payoffs and Middle-Class Layoffs,” -- which uses around nine seconds of the song -- reportedly aims to show that Obama rewarded campaign donors while regular Americans struggled in the sputtering economy. An Obama campaign spokesperson told the Washington Post that the ad was a "false line of attack." That might be, but most Web users don't have any way to judge the ad for themselves. That's because the clip was only available for a few hours before the music publisher BMG Rights Management sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to YouTube. The Romney campaign says it will file a DMCA counter-notice, in hopes of having the clip restored, according to the Post. Some observers say that the Romney camp has a good shot at prevailing. "We wouldn't want politicians to be able to insulate themselves from criticism just because they deploy copyrighted bits of pop culture in their campaign appearances," writes Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director at the digital rights group Public Knowledge. "By singing 'Let's Stay Together,' Obama is deploying a particular work to indicate aspects of himself as a president and a candidate (as a relatable guy who likes sentimental Al Green tunes) -- aspects that the Romney campaign will disagree with and want to subvert and criticize (that Obama, far from being a regular guy, is in deep with big money donors and lobbyists)." But even if the clip is protected by fair use principles, YouTube has no choice but to remove the ad pending its own investigation -- which could take up to two weeks. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides that video platforms like YouTube can be liable for infringement by users, unless infringing clips are removed in response to takedown requests. Similar disputes came up during the last presidential campaign. At one point a representative of the McCain-Palin campaign sent a letter to Google criticizing the company for taking down YouTube clips too quickly in response to media and entertainment companies' complaints. The McCain-Palin camp proposed that YouTube staff personally review clips submitted by political parties before taking them down. YouTube rejected that request. "While we agree with you that the U.S. presidential election-related content is invaluable and worthy of the highest level of protection, there is a lot of other content on our global site that our users around the world find to be equally important," a YouTube lawyer wrote to the campaign.
The only reason Autodesk’s surprise acquisition of mobile video-sharing company SocialCam for $60 million is not eye-popping is because we are still putting our glassies back in their sockets from Facebook’s billion-dollar Instagram grab a few months back. Ever since Zuckerberg used his pocket change to buy that fledgling image-sharing app, the industry has been preoccupied with “The Next Instagram.” All eyes turned to the video-sharing category, naturally, since recent analytics showed that the social multimedia segment was growing faster than any other mobile content vertical. Viddy and SocialCam were the key players, but no one expected the other shoe to drop so soon. And why the design software publisher Autodesk, of all companies? It turns out that SocialCam will go into the consumer group at the company, and Autodesk has been making a series of acquisitions aimed at pumping up both mobile and consumer-facing presence: Pixlr, Instructables, etc. In some sense, these are the kinds of moves that Adobe has been making in branching outside of b2b products and looking for ways to access the consumer and perhaps marketing services. Obviously, Autodesk is a weird fit with SocialCam, although their VP in charge of consumer products says it is all about advancing the art of shared design ideas. “Mobile computing, the cloud and social media are improving and changing the way people design, engineer and create projects,” Samir Hanna says in a company statement. “Video is an ideal medium for professionals and consumers alike to communicate and share their design ideas.” Yeah, well -- maybe. As we observed about SocialCam last month, founder Michal Seibel, who spun the company off from Justin.tv, has some sharp ideas about mobile video as a marketing tool. Sports teams, music stars and even GE and packaged goods makers are among the most followed entities on the network. He speculates about how marketers could make geo-triggered videos available to customers within event venues or any other location. SocialCam is already synched in with the mobile alerts systems. Being able to offer advertisers and brand partners a mobile design platform that distributes geotargeted video experiences? That doesn’t sound like too much of a stretch for a legacy software company that has to start thinking outside of the retail box.
Valuing context and impact in the marketing mix Do advancements in display advertising make advertisers better off today compared to four years ago? While that question might seem more appropriate for trying to sort through political policies during a presidential election year, it’s also relevant to the evolution of “premium” display ads, as technologies like programmatic buying and native ad units take hold. Ad pundits have already made display advertising the most jargon-littered playing field in the digital realm, forcing most of the world to constantly dodge a steady barrage of acronyms, from acc to dtp to ros to … wtf. Adding to the confusion is the constant evolution of what premium display — the industry’s alleged crème de la crème — actually means. To most major media brands, for example, “premium” still means banners and high-impact branding ad units on name-brand media sites. It refers to the unmissable banner ad for, let’s say, Acura or Lincoln Mercury that viewers see when they check on cnn.com for the latest headlines or espn.com for baseball scores. But for the more tech-driven companies, especially the dsp (demand-side platforms) or rtb (real-time bidding) players, the word premium is being redefined as “whatever performs.” In fact, the term “premium display” gets tossed around so much no one is sure what it means any longer. The ad tech space continues to evolve. The advent of rtb, which relies on automation and a machine to do the work, and Facebook Exchange will continue to change the dynamics of the marketplace. Premium ads integrated with social context will become the voice of the brand and prompt people to take action. The sun isn’t setting on display ads. Brands will simply integrate native elements that create shiny objects through an established media. But trying to figure out exactly where traditional display ads fit in today’s mix seems almost as difficult as trying to coax an undecided voter into either the Republican or Democrat camp this November: Both sides think they’ve got it all figured out, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions.Technology advances in social and automation don’t mean the end of display ads. They just mark the beginning of a hybrid model where ads follow editorial content and have an unobtrusive conversation with consumers. Consider a high school senior in California. On YouTube, surfing through skateboard videos, he clicks on a premium native video ad, this one for Chevrolet’s Sonic, watches for a few seconds, and then continues to jump from video to video. That creates a boost for brands. Revenue generated by display ads in the u.s. should reach $15.4 billion this year, up 24 percent from $12.4 billion in 2011, according to estimates from eMarketer.Publishers create content to build loyal, engaged audiences, but they typically deploy display ads or interruptive pre-roll video on their sites rather than encouraging brands to integrate media that will stimulate a conversation.Clearly, premium display ads win votes from brands looking to deliver the message. Once a static picture on a Web site, technologies like html5 and rich video enable images to fly off the page. Video connects with consumers who digest more than 32 hours of video monthly, according to Wayne Powers, senior vice president of North America sales at Yahoo.Traditional premium display-ad units integrating video appear to be headed toward branded entertainment, for example. Powers says advertising becomes part of the experience. That type of experience, however, depends on whether a person consumes content on desktops, smartphones, tablets or smart tvs. Advertisers will need to become more creative with immersive ads. He points to ads frequently promoting movies where characters pop out and move across the screen to capture the viewer’s attention. Premium display ads now allow consumers to view the trailer and buy the ticket to attend a theatrical release.Connecting with the consumer, Apple ran an expandable takeover home-page display ad one Sunday in December on Yahoo’s portal to demonstrate a new product’s features. The idea to connect with consumers took the advertisement beyond the typical display ad by adding niche content and links to places where consumers could go to make a purchase, Powers says.Advertisers want a better way to engage existing and potential customers. Suzie Reider, head of industry development at YouTube, points to an emerging trend in niche marketing, rather than advertising. Marketers have tightened the purse strings on traditional advertising to connect with consumers through conversation, sponsorships and branded content. “Commercials must act as content; you need an opportunity for interactivity and dialogue; and the campaign must scale,” she says, suggesting these three trends will drive YouTube’s business this year. Brand advertising execs will continue to want interesting home pages, but they will become more aware of innovating in the available real estate.Advances in display and online ad technologies work with YouTube’s home-page takeover ad, according to Reider. She says campaigns are not single lines on an ad insertion order anymore, but rather 10 lines. Marketers know they need to meet the viewer, so they incorporate a YouTube home page, search advertising and maybe a mobile roadblock. “It’s not about robbing Saint Peter to pay Paul; one will not cannibalize another,” she says. “We will see knee-jerk increases in digital investments. A lot of that is fueled by premium content [that] YouTube, AOL, Hulu and others have launched.” Mobile Fueling Display’s GrowthMobile devices are now so ubiquitous that the number of connections surpasses the u.s. population. Mobile Internet users now comprise half of all u.s. Internet users, and by 2016 the number will grow to 75 percent, according to eMarketer.And display remains the fastest-growing sub-category of advertising media, with 20 percent annual growth, thanks to the rapid rise of social media and online video advertising, according to ZenithOptimedia. By 2014, Publicis Groupe’s research arm expects display to reach 40 percent of Internet advertising, up from 36 percent in 2011.ZenithOptimedia predicts social media’s share of display to grow at an average rate of 31 percent during the next three years, achieving an 18.5 percent share in 2014, up from 14.4 percent of Internet display advertising in 2011.Native targeted display ads provide the best results. (Native means ad units that are specific to a media type, like sponsored stories in Facebook, promoted tweets on Twitter or branded videos on YouTube.) In Facebook, ads based on content, rather than messages, have a better chance of scoring big with members. Discussions about Facebook and Twitter’s relationships with advertisers and the impact of their native formats lead many to wonder whether the trend toward high-impact and native ad units remains sustainable. “Some say they don’t get advertisers, others say advertisers don’t get them,” admits Ari Brandt. “The truth is somewhere in between. I think advertisers do understand the value of native formats on Facebook and Twitter, but the problem is that it’s hard for brands to achieve and measure their advertising objectives using native ad units.”But creating these native ads isn’t easy. Ari Jacoby, ceo of Solve Media, which replaces captchas with brand advertising, points to two major challenges: additional work to create an opportunity, and whether the agency can create enough scale to make the investment profitable.“Agencies and marketers prefer to invest in platforms that are measurable and performance-based,” he says. “If the opportunity is scalable, it makes sense for them to invest time and resources into maximizing ad effectiveness from a particular native advertising placement.” Brandt says marketers and their ad agencies are responsible for selling products. To sell products, the ad must tell a compelling story about the product. To tell a compelling story, agencies need a “real palette” to capture the attention of consumers. He says it becomes difficult to tell a compelling story, not to mention sell a product, with native units.Unlike Brandt, Demand Media chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford says advertisers want to break out from the within the walls surrounding “pure advertising” and become part of the conversation with consumers. The savvier brands look and find ways to connect with consumers through useful content, which keeps the brand top of mind when those same consumers get ready to make a purchase. Are those same savvy advertisers comfortable enough with automating premium display ads that embed native content to connect more closely with consumers?The Hybrid ModelHigh-impact and native media in display-ad units will continue to evolve and support models not typically found at the top of the marketing funnel. rtb, paying per impression rather than per thousand, remains one media missing from the mix. It can work with advances in display technology that hold all parties accountable. Tools, such as DoubleVerify, ensure the ads serve up within plain view in the browser window.Some believe a hybrid model will emerge, supported by audience-targeting platforms like eXelate or Xaxis. rtb for premium ad buying would rely on data and audience segments to signal ad networks to bid or not to bid for that single impression. Automation brought rtb to display advertising at the bottom of the marketing funnel, but the concept could support takeover and native ads at the top, as well. How could programmatic buying work to support the sale of home-page takeovers? The industry would need to create a hybrid model. The major problem becomes publishers losing control of pricing in the rtb model. The highest bidder wouldn’t get the impression. Publishers and advertisers would need to agree on the cost-per-impression in advance, rather than selling the ad unit to the highest bidder on-the-fly.The hybrid model might not guarantee placement on certain sites, but it would guarantee high-quality placement based on a predetermined price per impression.For some, this hybrid model becomes a bit difficult to chew. “We’re not at a point yet where we can do programmatic buying for home-page takeovers,” says Christina Beaumier, vice president of global client development at Xaxis, a GroupM company. “The integration of creative and content makes it difficult to swap in and out publishers and advertisers.” Ads running one-page deep on a Web site remain valuable, and most brands will pay more for that space, Beaumier says, so expect to see higher cpms from publishers. The advertising industry will find new ways to integrate native media in desktop and mobile display ads. rtb becomes a more efficient. Some publishers don’t want to open home-page takeover ads or premium ad units to bidding for impressions in the rtb model. To make rtb work with home-page takeovers, the industry would need to create a new workflow. “I don’t see a world where we can auction in real time home-page takeovers to any old advertiser who happens to bid the highest,” Beaumier says. “Audience buying is the umbrella. rtb is one of the ways we get there. We can still do audience buying on premium content, but we don’t see any of the efficiencies of the workflow. It’s all done manually.”
Content publishers invest large amounts of time and money defining and honing their media brands. As a result, a publisher’s internal sales team is well-versed and well-trained in directly selling the unique value propositions associated with that property. In truth, a publisher’s sales force lives and breathes the brand every day, and they are likely second-to-none in selling their content to the marketplace. Homepage takeovers, content sponsorships and other packages that promote a site’s prime real estate still comprise the bulk of revenue for premier publishers. Of course, we all know the saying: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s why when it comes to audience-based selling, it’s tempting to try to do it in-house as well. After all, if your sales team can broker million dollar deal roadblocks with some of the most savvy media agency minds in the business, they’ll be able to pitch specific audience profiles like new moms to diaper advertisers, right? Maybe, maybe not. It’s true that a growing arsenal of publisher-side tools and technologies are allowing publishers more in-depth knowledge of their audiences than ever before. In fact, this technology may well be able to identify the diaper-buying parents within an audience. This audience data is invaluable and can feed a number of important initiatives, from programming and content development, to marketing strategies, pricing and inventory management. However, while it’s important for a publisher to understand and tap into the value of its audience segments, it’s often very difficult to try to actually sell that audience with an in-house sales team for several reasons:
It was roughly ten years ago that a crack team of bureaucrats and behavioral therapists declared me constitutionally unfit for office duty. Owing to a handful of sins against community - neglecting to lid my Beefaroni before reheating it, refusing to make small talk about the winter cold/spring pollen/summer heat/autumn pleasantness - I was blacklisted from employment at any venue that would place me within farting distance of other human beings. While I haven't entirely fallen into freelance disrepair - I equate pants, and the donning thereof, with dignity - it's been a lonely, if professionally satisfying and hyperproductive, last decade. All that's to say: I have no idea what today's office looks, acts or smells like. For all I know, the office atmosphere could be in the midst of a practical and political renaissance, one in which room temperature is forever fixed at 70 degrees and workers refrain from interpreting Stu from personnel's shyness as iron-clad evidence of imminent layoffs. So please, view my comments on Jive's office-obliteration clip through that lens of blithe ignorance. I know not of what I speak. I'm an innocent. The folks in the video, however, are jaded. They work in a faceless capacity at Faceless Corp., a maker of products so frivolous and dispensable that identifying them would only serve to render us comatose. So when their fax machines (??) start jamming and their filing cabinets start overflowing and their computers start blue-screen-of-death-ing, they lose their crap. In a rampage that will surely attract the attention of John Q. Law, they trash the office benign-white-person-style, toppling cubicle walls and upending piles of paperwork. Once they're done, they hop on the elevator and lend their annihilatory flair to a contiguous floor. As the initial crew of destruction grows fivefold, the tone shifts, from frustration to anarchic, white-collar joy. Motivational posters, some embossed with the images of adorable baby kittens who have hurt exactly no one, are not spared. Thank heavens for the presence of the big boss man - who, after viewing the carnage from his Venetian-blind-shielded corner office, heads into the fray. After his sort-of-imposing-if-you-fear-middle-aged-men-in-tailored-suits presence silences the office, he seizes a sledgehammer and, after a dramatic pause, wreaks some havoc of his own. Finally, four of the original mutineers pull minimalist desks together in the middle of the room, where they work on their minimalist laptops without having to endure the administrative and practical tyranny of pens and paper. A message appears on screen ("liberate the office the day you give them Jive"), and that's that. Despite its obvious turn - it telegraphs the dickens out of Mr. Imposing Boss' decision to partake in the destruction - I find the clip entertaining enough. Really, you can never go too wrong with blowing stuff up. But I did have one question after watching it a third time: What or who is a Jive? Is it some kind of laptop/paper shredder hybrid? Is it a genetically modified superpencil that captures data as it writes and beams it up into the cloud? I have no idea, other than what the clip tells me: That it will allow - nay, encourage - me to set fire to my office. A detail of this kind would appear to matter. I can't lie: I'm hurt. It sure would've been keen for the company to let me in on the secret from the get-go, or at least treat me to a big reveal at the end of the clip. While further research reveals that Jive is "the world's most advanced social business platform" and one packed with "all the latest tools for collaboration and communication," I shouldn't have to figure this out on my own, or arrive at this conclusion via covert means. So throw another one onto the pile of online videos that prize entertainment over information. It's getting kinda high and unwieldy.